ybody else's cookin' than my own, whether
I'm feelin' well or not; but for mercy's sake don't get anything from my
basket on that waiter you're fixin' up for Mary. My cake ain't as light
as it might be, and the icin' didn't cook long enough; and when it comes
to bread, you all know a ten-year-old child could beat me."

The May Meeting dinners in Goshen neighborhood had long been famous.
Town people who were so fortunate as to partake of one were wont to talk
of it for years afterward, for the standards of housewifery in this
part of the country were of the highest, and the consciences of the
housewives made them live sternly up to their ideals, all but Sally. Her
cooking and her housekeeping were always below the mark. But she had the
wisdom to ward off censure by a prompt and cheerful admission of her
failures, and none but a professional critic like Ma Harris cared to
find fault with the delinquent who frankly said of herself the worst
that could be said.

May Meeting in the country is like Easter Sunday in town, a gala
occasion, and it was an idyllic scene around the little country church
as the congregation gathered under the trees. Stalwart men, matronly
women, and youth and maiden clad in fresh apparel that matched the garb
of Nature. They had worshipped God in prayer and song within church
walls, and now they were to enjoy the gifts of God under the arch of his
blue sky and in the green aisles of his first temple. The old earth had
yielded a bountiful tribute to man's toil, and on the damask cloths
spread over the sward lay the fruits and grains of last year's harvest,
changed by woman's skill into the viands that are the symbols of
Southern hospitality, as salt is the symbol of the Arab's.

The minister stood, and turning his face heavenward, said grace, his
words blending with the soft twitter of birds and the murmur of wind in
the young leaves. Then arose a crescendo of voices, the bass of the men,
the treble of the women, and the shrill chatter of children, glad with
the gladness of May, but softened and subdued because it was Sunday. And
now and then the Sawyer twins lifted up their voices and wept, not
because there was any cause for weeping, but because weeping was as yet
their only means of communication with the strange new world into which
they had lately come. The Master who proclaimed that the Sabbath was
made for man, and who walked through the cornfield on that holy day,
might have been an honored